Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. is a materials physicist, self-owned, a benevolent and tolerant Objectivist, a husband and father, the owner of a materials analysis laboratory, and a thinking individualist. The critical battle of our day is the conflict between the individual and the state. We must be ever vigilant and constant defenders of the equal sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, and the personal pursuit of happiness.

Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

28 June 2014

This is a simple explanation why an essential claim of greenhouse gas theory or the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is very wrong. That theory believes that back-radiation from the atmosphere to the surface is about the same as the total solar radiation incident upon the top of the Earth's atmosphere. For a much longer exposition of many of the problems with this theory you might examine my earlier and much-updated post

This post is comparatively very short and will only discuss a simple explanation of the cornerstone argument of huge back-radiation to the surface. Indeed, I will show why that back-radiation is virtually zero. Because it is nearly zero, the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is shown to be nonsense. There is no excuse for governments acting to force individuals and companies to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. Doing so is very expensive, causes energy reliability problems, and puts people out of work. Causing these miseries in the name of a failed hypothesis is a very serious injustice to mankind.

Now notice that the emitted surface radiation is 117% of the top of the atmosphere average radiation from the sun and back-radiation is 100% of the top of the atmosphere incident solar radiation. Notice also that only 48% of the total solar radiation was ever absorbed by the Earth's surface. Of the 48% of the total solar incident energy absorbed by the surface, 25% is lost by evaporation of water and 5% by convection loss, leaving only 18% to be emitted by radiation. Now the proponents of the large greenhouse warming effect claim that the 18% is just a net difference between a larger surface radiation emission rate and a large back-radiation rate. In this case the difference of 117% - 100% = 17%, which is about 18%. We are going to evaluate this claim.

Consider the surface of the Earth
for a moment. The density of atoms per cubic meter in the surface is
about 1 gram per cubic centimeter for the water that covers about 71% of the
Earth's surface and even greater for land materials or if considering the salts
in the oceans. Expressed as a density per cubic meter of water, this is
1000 kg per cubic meter. A cubic meter of water has 3.34 x 1028 water molecules.Infra-red emission and absorption in a
surface occurs in the outer 2 micrometers of the surface.Consequently, there are about 6.7 x 1022
water molecules emitting infra-red at most from the surface. When infra-red radiation is incident upon the surface, these are the same water molecules that would be able to absorb that radiation.

The density of the atmosphere
near the surface at sea level is 1.225 kg per cubic meter in the U.S. Standard
Atmosphere at a temperature of 288.15K. Adding water vapor very slightly decreases that density. The number of
molecules per cubic meter at sea level in the U.S. Standard Atmosphere is 2.55
x 1025/m3.The
important infra-red active gas near the surface is water vapor and its density
per cubic meter is commonly between 10 g/kg to 14 g/kg of air as shown in Fig. 1. below.At a specific humidity of 12
g/kg, the number of water molecules/m3 of air is about 4.9 x 1023.Therefore, there are more water molecules in
the first cubic meter of air above 1 m2 of water surface emitters by
a factor of 7.3.This should mean that
radiation that can be absorbed by water vapor will be absorbed in the first
meter of air above the surface at a humidity near the Earth average humidity. There is a report that the average mean free length for water vapor absorption in the atmosphere is as long as 8 m. If it actually is that long, then the result I get below on the amount of back-radiation can be multiplied by a factor of 8. That number will still be most unimpressive.

Fig.
1. The average specific humidity of air is shown as a function of
latitude. The specific humidity is the weight of water in grams in one
kilogram of air.

In comparison, at 400 ppm of carbon
dioxide, there are 1.0 x 1022 molecules of CO2 /m3.There are 49 water vapor molecules for every
carbon dioxide molecule at a specific humidity of 12 g/kg.In addition, the emissivity of CO2
molecules is less than 40% that of water vapor molecules. Since many of the carbon dioxide
molecule absorption peaks are largely or mostly already absorbed by
overlapping water vapor absorption lines, the effect of CO2 near the surface is very minimal compared to
that of water vapor.This is less true
at altitudes above 4 km where the concentration of water vapor drops greatly and the carbon dioxide remains in proportion to nitrogen and oxygen, but such altitudes have nothing to do with the
back-radiation to the surface issue.

Returning to the back-radiation caused
by water vapor, we find that the temperature difference over the 1 meter
absorption range according to the U.S. Standard Atmosphere is only about
0.0065 K/m. For humid air, the temperature gradient is even less. So if the water surface and
the water vapor in the first meter of air above the surface are treated as gray
bodies, we have a power transfer from the surface to the water vapor in the atmosphere
of PW

PW = σ (εs
Ts4 – εa Ta4) ,

for the surface s and the atmosphere
water vapor a and if we take the emissivities to be a high value of 0.95 often used by the catastrophic man-made global warming promoters, this is equal to
0.033 W/m2.

This is actually an over-estimate because we have ignored the fact that some of the heat energy in the surface is used to evaporate water and some is lost to the air by means of air molecule collisions with the surface. Much of the solar radiation absorbed by the surface is actually transferred out of the surface by evaporation and by conduction. Of the 48% of solar radiation absorbed by the surface according to the above NASA schematic, a total of 30% is removed from the Earth's surface by evaporation and convection/conduction. This leaves only about 18% to be radiated away from the surface. So if the Earth's surface was an interface directly with vacuum, the 48% of solar radiation absorbed would be radiated in its entirety. But other processes, evaporation and conduction, remove most of this energy, leaving a fraction of only 18%/48% = 0.375 of the total energy flux to be removed by radiation.

But water vapor does not absorb
infra-red across the entire surface emission spectrum.It actually absorbs only about 65% of
it. At least 28% of the surface emission is into the atmospheric window where no atmospheric gases absorb the infra-red radiation. See the transmission spectrum of the Earth's infra-red surface emissions taken by Nimbus IV in 1970 near Guam below:

This points out one of many flaws in the NASA depiction of the Earth Energy Budget above. Taking the two atmospheric windows at higher wave numbers than the peak of the Earth emission spectrum, the infra-red radiated into them is about 28%. 28% of the 117% surface infra-red emission claimed by NASA is 33%, not the 12% quantity their schematic assigns to the atmospheric window radiation lost directly into space from the surface. The direct loss to space of surface emission with the NASA depicted 117% surface emission should be 2.75 times what NASA puts in its Earth Energy Budget schematic diagram at the start of this article. This inconsistency suggests that the surface emission radiation is actually much less than the 117% claimed. If that emission is much less, then the back-radiation would also have to be much less.

So the actual water vapor absorbed
infra-red radiation is only about

PW = (0.375) (0.65) (0.033 W/m2) = 0.0080 W/m2.

But because of the 6.9 x 109
collisions/s in air near sea level, most of this energy is transferred to non-radiating nitrogen,
oxygen, and argon.Only about 20% is
re-radiated and half of that is radiated toward space.Consequently, the total back-radiation which can be absorbed by the surface, PB,
is about

PB = (0.2) (.5) (0.0080
W/m2) = 0.00080 W/m2

Thus, the absorbed back-radiation
has an upper limit of about 0.00023% of the average solar insolation at the top
of the atmosphere (342 W/m2)!For all intents and
purposes, the absorbed back-radiation is zero. This value should be multiplied by the mean free path for absorption by water vapor, which may be as large as 8 m on average.

I just proceeded down the true path of analysis dictated by the use of Occam's Razor. Let us assume that NASA is right that 117% of the solar incident radiation at the top of the atmosphere actually is emitted from the surface due to some unknown extra input energy that lifts the 48% of the solar absorbed energy flux at the surface by 117% + 25% + 5% - 48% = 99% so that one can have 117% radiation, 25% evaporation, and 5% conduction cooling mechanisms at work. Is it possible for that 99% warming source to be back-radiation?The 117% radiation is greater than the 18% upon which I performed the Occam's Razor version of the calculation. In fact, the back-radiation per meter of mean free path is then 117% / 18% = 6.5 times greater than the value I calculated. So, if we assume that the average water vapor mean free path is 8m, we get 8 (6.5) (0.00023%) = 0.012%, which does not look at all like the 100% claimed by NASA.

Because back-radiation to the surface is insignificant compared to the claims made by the proponents of catastrophic man-made global warming,the mechanism upon which that theory stands is wrong. Indeed, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will actually cause more incoming solar radiation to be absorbed by the atmosphere before it reaches the surface. This results in a cooling of the surface. In addition, more CO2 in the atmosphere near the surface will also cause the temperature gradient in the atmosphere to become slightly smaller, just as infra-red absorbing water vapor makes it smaller. This is because radiation transport effects operate at the speed of light, which is faster than evaporation/condensation transport or conduction/convection transport of energy. Since all remove energy from the surface, they are all cooling effects. As a result, adding CO2 to the atmosphere actually causes a very slight cooling of the surface, contrary to the claims of a substantial warming effect.The primary sources of CO2 in the atmosphere are warming oceans, decaying plant life, and heat vents and volcanic emissions. Since CO2 in the atmosphere creates a slight cooling of the surface, it acts as a negative feedback to the warming oceans that cause it to increase and it slightly cools the decaying plants to slow down the further generation of CO2 from that source. Of course volcanic and heat vent sources of CO2 are also providing heating, so carbon dioxide as an surface coolant acts to stabilize the Earth's temperature much as water vapor does. It has negative feedback effects. It is no more subject to the sort of tipping point catastrophes that global warming alarmists put out than is water vapor, though its effects are much, much weaker.

This article was last updated on 29 July 2014.

[The fact that back-radiation itself is insignificant in explaining the 33C warming of the surface claimed by the proponents of catastrophic AGW is not at all to say that the effects of water vapor on the surface temperature are without significance. During the day the evaporation of water is an important surface cooling effect and during the night its condensation can be an important warming effect. During the day, the infra-red active gases absorb a portion of the incoming solar radiation and prevent it from being absorbed by the surface. At night, fog and clouds scatter, reflect, and absorb the infra-red radiation emitted from the surface. Also at night, the small true back-radiation effect is not off-set by the absorption of incoming solar radiation by the same infra-red active molecules in the atmosphere. There is a very important moderation of the surface temperature between day and night due to these effects. This note was added on 13 November 2014 to remind people of the context in which my criticism of the usual greenhouse gas theory is framed.]

15 June 2014

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the percentage change of real GDP in 2013 was:

Now recall that real GDP is under-corrected for inflation due to the government insistence in leaving such volatile, but clearly more rapidly increasing cost, items such as food and energy are not included in the cost of living index. Then also recall that one should really be looking at real per capita GDP since that tells us whether our standard of living is actually increasing. If the GDP increases by less than the rate of growth of the population, then our standard of living actually falls. The average US population growth rate was 0.9% from 2001 to 2010, so real GDP increases of 0.9% provides a stagnant standard of living.

New York state which is running ads nationally claiming to be the second best job creator state in the nation clearly underperformed in 2013 with a state GDP that grew by a mere 0.7%. The state of Maryland, whose Governor O'Malley believes himself ready to run for the presidency, had a 0.0% growth rate. Yes, preventing the growth of one's own state's GDP now qualifies a politician well for the Democrat Party nomination for the presidency!

Most of the high growth states in the US are in the center of the nation. The Dakotas, the Rocky Mountain states, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia are the heroic states for those who wish to earn a living.

09 June 2014

Steven Goddard at Real Science has lately had a series of posts on the effects of a very large reduction of temperature data reported from many weather stations since 1990. The effect of the data loss and its replacement with massaged data, turns out to be a considerable artificial warming effect. His most recent post is here.

The following plot by Steven Goddard of the older and generally complete temperature data in the USHCN temperature record kept by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) until 1990 shows the separated data from the stations still reporting complete data and compares that to the temperature data, then complete, of the stations which are missing much of their temperature data since 1990:

Clearly the stations reporting complete data since 1990 are the stations that were warmer prior to 1990 than those which have been reporting incomplete data since 1990. The temperature differences between the two data sets prior to 1990 are very substantial.

In an earlier post, Goddard presented the percentage of the NOAA USHCN temperature data for which there was no raw data in the record by year:

Note the increase in the missing raw temperature data since 1990, which became a particularly rapid increase in lost raw temperatures after 1994. The rate of loss of raw data is really remarkable in the recent years of stagnant temperature reports, indicating that there is a greater and greater need by the alarmists to hide the cooling that must really be going on of late.

Steven Goddard then presents the data as reported since 1990 from these same two sets of stations on the basis of the raw data that actually was reported in the raw data record.

So it becomes very clear that NOAA is preferentially losing the raw temperature data since 1990 from the cooler stations. The final massaged data that they report to everyone replaces the missing cooler temperatures with temperatures interpolated geographically from the warmer data from the stations with complete raw temperature data records. That is, NOAA is not just losing cooler raw temperatures, but it is adding in warmer temperatures as though that comes from the cooler stations!

It is clear that many of the NOAA warm stations are warm because of urban and suburban locations, airport locations, and massive heat absorbing or even heat-emitting objects at the immediate site. The Urban Heat Island Effect has corrupted much of the NOAA weather station network data. Far from correcting the data from overly warm sites downward, NOAA is correcting the cooler and usually better station data upward. See Anthony Watts' recent evaluation of the USHCN weather stations.

Over and over, I am asked scornfully by believers in the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis if I believe that the government and many climate alarmist scientists are lying to us. There are many temperature records that have clearly been adjusted with great bias of heart to exaggerate or manufacture a warming trend to support this hypothesis. I have discussed this in many prior posts. This very interesting sleuthing by Steven Goddard into the NOAA USHCN temperature data and what NOAA has villainously and corruptly done to the temperature record makes it very clear that our government and its scientists are very determinedly lying to us. Apparently, the lust for power is overwhelming for many government scientists and for many scientists funded by the power lusting government.

The Columbia Journalism Review scores the “increasingly
closed-door culture” of university boards, such as Kent State
University’s, which not only conducted a secret presidential search
recently but “admitted to shredding documents to cover their tracks.”
How about the boards of Wayne State University and the University of
Michigan, which not only kept their searches secret but suppressed the
names of the finalists until both were hired. Then they told the world!

One can see that given the state of commitment to Progressive Elitism and to political correctness on college campuses that it must be very nearly impossible to conduct the managerial affairs of a public college in the open. If the board and selection committees maintain political correctness and promote Progressive Elitism as they are expected to by student activists and most faculty members, many taxpayers will be appalled to see what is going on. If the board and other college controlling committees do not do as expected by student activists and faculty, they are also in very hot water. Nay, boiling water surrounded by drooling cannibals on most campuses. Given the culture of the college campus today, such public institutions of Progressive Elitist indoctrination are in a dilemma in all but the most socialistic of states.

Private universities generally only need to satisfy their alumni, students, and faculty, despite raking in huge sums of research grants from the taxpayers. This is a less tough nut to crack, especially in the Ivy League and equivalent schools, where the alumni have long been very successfully indoctrinated in the Progressive Elitist viewpoint. These Ivy League schools are very assured that virtually all of their graduates are fully committed to Progressive Elitism, partly because they select for that in their admissions and partly because the on-campus commitment to this indoctrination has long been so thorough.

So how did I escape becoming a Progressive Elitist at Brown University? By never tiring of pitched debates with up to a dozen Progressive Elitists at a time. By never being intimated, because I was able to shake the very foundations of their belief, at least for a few hours. After which they would return as though the discussion never occurred, but with no better ideas than those ideas that had failed so miserably but hours earlier. Progressive Elitism is definitely a religion for almost all such persons and they refuse to allow that religion to be evaluated and assessed by reason. But being fully committed to reason, I at least was not susceptible to their religious conformity.

Just as most people in many communities become captured by their desire to belong to a particular dominant religion, whether Christian, Hindi, Islam, or Buddhism, so too do most people in a community dominated by the Progressive Elitist religion just have to be Progressive Elitists so they will belong. So while people are complex and highly differentiated individuals, most still have a great desire to conform so they will be accepted into a community of people. If this means denying reality, including their own natures, well then reality will generally be denied. The human suffering that results knows few bounds, which is why our culture has become more and more cheerless and more and more nihilistic.

Only a community committed to reality, reason, productivity, and individuality can achieve man's greatest needs of security, freely given and valued friendships, real cooperation in mutual endeavors and relationships, the freedom to pursue our highly differentiated values generally according to our individual natures, and hence the freedom to pursue our own happiness. Such a community is rich in its choices and possibilities.

Unfortunately, those people with already low self-esteem are fearful of that very richness of choices and possibilities. The less free a society becomes, the larger the number of people with such low self-esteem and the more fearful the society becomes of individuality, choices, and possibilities. Universities, far from opening young people's eyes to the joy of pursuing life in such a rich, reality-driven society, have long been indoctrinating them to choose a conforming, low-choice, hierarchically managed society that denies them their very individuality.

Ayn Rand on Morality

"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."

Anthem by Ayn Rand

"For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men."

James Madison

"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent ancroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations: but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism."

General George S. Patton

"If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking."

H. L. Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face to rule it."

George Orwell

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."

H. L. Mencken

"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."

Thomas H. Huxley

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."

Thomas Jefferson on Democracy

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Henry Ford

"Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work."

Thomas Jefferson on Truth

"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

Niccolo Machiavelli

"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."

Sherlock Holmes

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle if you prefer.

Mary McCarthy

"Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism."

Sen. Tim Wirth, Democrat, Colorado

"We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory is wrong, we will be doing the right thing."

Bismarck

"Fools learn by experience, the wise man learns by the experience of others."

Albert Einstein

As Albert Einstein once said about the book "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein": “Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would be enough.”

Governments are Never Sovereign

Only individuals are sovereign. Governments are either legitimate or illegitimate. They are legitimate only to the extent that they protect the exercise of every individual's right to life; liberty; the ownership of their own mind, body, and labor; their property; their freedom of conscience and association, and the pursuit of their own happiness. No government on Earth is highly legitimate. Most are highly illegitimate.

So sayeth Charles R. Anderson.

Dr. Thomas Sowell is Retiring

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."

"The real minimum wage is zero."

"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."

"People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do."

"The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses, it is about the egos of the elites."

"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."

Prof. Walter E. Williams on Democracy

"... one of the primary dangers of majority rule is that it confers an aura of legitimacy and respectability to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyrannical."

Ayn Rand on Minorities

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

Hillary Clinton on Job Creation

"Don't let anybody tell you that, you know, its corporations and businesses that create jobs."

Socialists never want anyone to credit individuals with a productive purpose as the source of their jobs. When the government piles on such heavy taxes and regulations as to prevent job formation, they are always trying to misdirect the people's attention. Hillary has been vigorous in promising more taxes and more major regulations which will make the Obama record of 0.5% annual increases in real per capita GDP look good in comparison.

Frederic Bastiat

"It's impossible to introduce into society a greater evil than this, the conversion of Law into an instrument of PLUNDER."

Ayn Rand

"The number of its adherents is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of an idea. A majority is as fallible as a minority or as an individual man. A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea." ... "it is important to note the epistemological significance of a free society. In a free society, the pursuit of truth is protected by the free access of any individual to any field of endeavor he may choose to enter." ... "This prevents the formation of any coercive "elite" in any profession -- it prevents the legalized enforcement of a "monopoly on truth" by any gang of power seekers -- it protects the free market place of ideas -- it keeps all doors open to man's inquiring mind."

The catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is no exception to these general truths about the right of every individual to examine and evaluate any idea.

Do Not Subordinate Your Mind to the Mind of Another

The vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

John Galt in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

UN Agenda 21, Principle 15

"In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."

The real operating principle: Neither shall total lack of scientific certainty delay taking action with catastrophic economic effects if one can imagine some environmental degradation.

Dr. Thomas Sowell

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today."

"What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture -- and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture."

"It is so easy to be wrong -- and to persist in being wrong -- when the costs of being wrong are paid by others."

"Intellectuals have trouble remembering that they are not God."

Saul Alinsky

"To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life."

It is good to understand what the nihilists think, especially since such politicians as Obama and Hillary admire this man and use his principles for damaging the private sector and Capitalism.

Ronald Reagan

"If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"

A democratic society that needs a much-controlling government to manage the affairs of its People has a People so lacking in character and ability that there is no hope the People can democratically elect leaders of good character and adequate capability. That society is doomed by a self-contradiction. The escape from doom is the development in the People of such character and ability that they shun a much-controlling government.

Aesop

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."

Christine Stewart, Canadian Minister of the Environment

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony.... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world."

What a sad thing is attempted justice without truth.

Aldous Huxley

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

Ayn Rand

"'There are no evil thoughts, Mr. Rearden,' Francisco said softly, 'except one: the refusal to think.'"

Francisco D'Anconia to Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged

Frederic Bastiat on the Law

"It has been used to destroy its own objective. It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.”

Louis L'Amour in High Lonesome

"Folks talk a lot about the maternal feeling in women, but they say nothing about man's need to protect and care for someone; yet the one feeling is as basic as the other."

"Nor were they free of the images their own minds held of themselves. The man on horseback, the lone-riding man, the lone-thinking man, possessed an image of himself that was in part his own, in part a piece of all the dime novels he had read, for no man is free of the image his literature imposes on him. And the dime novel made the western hero a knight-errant, a man on horseback rescuing the weak and helpless."

Dr. Thomas Sowell

"Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a Ph.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left."

"Even liberal professors can be adversely affected by the narrow groupthink that prevails. Without an opposition to keep them on their toes, they can develop sloppy habits of dismissing or even demonizing differing viewpoints, instead of practicing and teaching their students how to come to grips with opposing beliefs."

From Dry Rot in Academia

John Stuart Mill

"In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character was abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."

Josepth Stalin

"We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?"

Robert Tracinski

"The way we view the naked human body reflects our view of human nature itself. We portray our bodies in ways that are crude or refined depending on whether we view our souls as crude or refined. And we do the same with the sensuality and the sexual capacity of our bodies. We can view sex and the nude body as a dangerous temptation that draws us away from higher ideals and down into the muck—or we can make it part of those higher ideals. We can make it an expression of a wider lust for life, an expression of the same spirit of aspiration that drives all of our other achievements."

The Three Graces by Antonio Canova

David by Michelangelo

Frederic Bastiat

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

"But how is this legal plunder to be to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."

Ayn Rand on Excellence

"If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

Ayn Rand

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see."

Patrick Henry

"No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."

H. L. Mencken

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Catastrophic man-made global warming is a great example of such alarmism to justify more power for the politicians and bureaucrats.

Thomas Jefferson

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add, `within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

Ayn Rand

"Serenity comes from the ability to say 'Yes' to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say 'No' to the wrong choices made by others."

Galileo Galilei

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."

"By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox."

Henry Ford

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

Samuel Adams

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks."

The Constitution itself remains a strong defense of our individual rights, but those who want power over our lives have long claimed ridiculous interpretations of the powers it grants to the federal government which they have cemented in irrational precedents. Time after time, the fact that our individual rights are broad and must allow each of us to manage our own lives while we pursue our own chosen values, so long as we do not violate the equal rights of others, is a context ignored.

Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

When the government controls the education system, you can be sure the education system will guarantee the ignorance of the people so they may be ruled without the impediment of the people demanding their individual rights.

John C. Goodman

"Closing Off Consumption Opportunities. Just as low-income individuals in their role as producers are increasing[ly] regulated out of income earning opportunities, in their role as consumers they are increasingly regulated out of the market for essential services. In addition to education and housing, they have been regulated out of the market for medical care, transportation and even police protection. For all these essential services, the wealthy turn to the private marketplace. They even employ police officers as off-duty, private guards for their gated communities. The poor are left with public housing, public schools, public transportation, government-provided health care, etc.

The well-off get all the benefits of capitalism. The poor are left with socialism."

Averroes

"An army of philosophers would not be sufficient to change the nature of error and to make it truth."

An army of scientist mercenaries at the service of All-Controlling Government is not sufficient to make the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis true either.

Ayn Rand on the Creative Man

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

Lawrence W. Reed

"It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions."

Patrick Henry

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government lest it come to dominate our lives and our interests."

Prof. Walter E. Williams

"That initial premise is that each of us owns himself. Stated another way: I am my private property and you are yours. The institution of private property is the right held by the owner of property to keep, acquire, dispose, and exclude from use. The premise of self-ownership determines which human acts are moral or immoral and consistent with that premise. For example, rape, murder, slavery, fraud, and theft are immoral because they violate private property."

Thomas Jefferson

The "sum of good government" is one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another" and "shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement."

The presumption is maximum liberty limited not by the welfare of others, but only by the injunction to do no harm to others.

H. L. Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Madison Versus Hitler

"(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation... (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so." Adolf Hitler

Frederic Bastiat

"The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education."

Mark Twain

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

This certainly applies to those who believe in the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmists, minimum wage laws, ObamaCare, the ethanol in gasoline mandate, and tying solar and wind power in high percentages to the electric grid.

Prof. Walter E. Williams on White Privilege

"The concept of white privilege, along with diversity and multiculturalism, is part of today's campus craze. .....

The bottom line to this campus nonsense is that "privilege" has become the new word for "personal achievement." ....

Are those who work hard, take risks, make life better for others and become wealthy in the process the people who should be held up to ridicule and scorn? And should we make mascots out of social parasites?"

Albert Einstein

"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."

Prof. John Christy, Climate Scientist

“If it’s not economically sustainable, it’s not sustainable.”

Ayn Rand on Human Progress

"Man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress."

George Orwell

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."

Abbot of Arbroath, Chancellor of Robert the Bruce

"For so long as one hundred of us shall remain alive we shall never in any wise consent to submit to the rule of the English. For it is not for glory we fight, for riches, or for honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man loses but with his life." April 1320, Six years after the Battle of Bannockburn

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free."

If one is told " 'it is expedient for the state that you should die,' he should die."

From The Social Contract, a most emphatic statement of authoritarian collectivism by a profound misanthropist.

Patrick Henry

"The Constitution is NOT an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the PEOPLE to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interest."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."

Alexander Hamilton

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government."

Milton Friedman

“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

John Quincy Adams

"Muhammad declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind... The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Muhammad is the prophet of God."

Justice Robert H. Jackson

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

This applies to the government-run education system, as well as every other act of government, including its procurements.

Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead

"Don't bother to examine a folly, ask only what it accomplishes."

Ayn Rand's villain giving us insight into the beliefs of the Progressive Elitists and others with beliefs too divorced from reality to be creditable, yet widely believed or propagated.

Thomas Jefferson

"let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."

Of course this belief implies those great constraints on democracy imposed by the Constitution.

About Me

I enjoy rational analytical conversations, learning from thinking people, and solving problems of science and technology. My perspective is that of an Objectivist with a joyous sense of life, a great appreciation for human complexity, differentiation, and achievement, and a benevolent regard for others. Nothing clarifies understanding like writing about it or trying to teach ideas. A recurring theme is the importance of individuality and the fight for individual rights against the onslaught of the Nanny State and socialism. I wish to live the life of a rational self-managing adult and am amazed that so many others wish to be perpetual children. The fear, envy, and guilt that cause many to yield their individual rights to collectivism are ugly, anti-life emotions. I consistently believe in both the personal and the economic rights of the sovereign individual. As the United States Declaration of Independence says, each of us has the selfish right to our life, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness. Our mostly ignored Constitution attempts to severely limit the powers of the federal government and to preserve the development and the exercise of our individual conscience.

Robert Tracinski

"The real minimum wage is zero. Actually, it’s less than zero: the real “minimum wage” is going into debt just to have a shot at doing the work you love."

I went hugely into debt to set up my materials analysis laboratory and paid myself only $10,000 in the first year and even less in the Obama Recession years of 2010 - 2012.

Obama

“When what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new.” 2015 State of the Union Address

So, we should ditch Big Government, government health care, The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs, Social Security, the Federal Reserve, government-run education, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the Jones Act), and all expansionist interpretations of the Interstate Commerce and the Taxation Clauses of the Constitution upon this Obama Principle of Failure.

Louis L'Amour

"when in doubt, sit down and think. It is only the mind of man that has lifted him above the animals." Evie's Dad

"If he starts anything with me I'll just cloud up and rain all over him." Conagher

"You better ride out of here, Staples. An' leave that gun alone. You ain't fit to handle one. And don't you cross my trail again. I don't like bein' braced by no tin-horn." Conagher

"To be a man was to be responsible. It was as simple as that. To be a man was to build something, to try to make the world about him a bit easier to live in for himself and those who followed." Conagher

"it was the man who planted a tree, dug a well, or graded a road who mattered."

"Conagher had worked too hard too many times to like a thief or a vandal who would steal or destroy the efforts of other men."

Big Bill Knudsen on Progress

"Progress is only made when fear is overcome by curiosity. If you are curious enough, you will not have any fear."

William S. Knudsen

Elbert Hubbard

"Prison is a Socialist's Paradise, where equality prevails, everything is supplied, and competition is eliminated."

Charles R. Anderson

"Every law mandates more guns. Most laws now outlaw individual value choices and more voluntary cooperation among individuals."

Bad Deeds by Robert Bidinotto

2nd Great Thriller about Bringing Justice to Eco Terrorists -- Nominated for Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Book of the Year 2014

Charles Anderson on Hope

".... hope is contingent upon having the freedom to make your own value choices and make their achievement your personal dream. Without the dream, there is no hope. Without the value choice, there is no dream."

A Collapsing Predation, a Plea for Salvation

"These are just plain, ordinary people, Mr. Galt, " said Chick Morrison in a tone intended to project their abject humility. "They can't tell you what to do. They wouldn't know. They're merely begging you. They may be weak, helpless, blind, ignorant. But you, who are so intelligent and strong, can't you take pity on them? Can't you help them?" "By dropping my intelligence and following their blindness?" "They may be wrong, but they don't know any better!" "But I, who do, should obey them?"

From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Sen. Tom Coburn Addressing the Senate

"Your whole goal is to protect the United States of America, its Constitution and its liberties. It's not to provide benefits for your state. That's where we differ -- that's where my conflict with my colleagues has come. It's nice to be able to do things for your state, but that isn't our charge. Our charge is to protect the future of our country by upholding the Constitution." December 2014

James Madison on Laws

"It will be of little avail to the people ... if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."

Yet this is exactly the sorry state of law in America today. Even the legislators whose full-time job is to make laws cannot read them before voting on them. How can it even be imagined that a small businessman can know the law and the voluminous regulations applied most especially and most vigorously to commercial endeavors? It cannot be so imagined, which makes it clear that the intent is to make every businessman a criminal precariously dependent upon the goodwill of those with power in the government.

Charles R. Anderson on Argument

"Observe which side resorts to the most vociferous name-calling and you are likely to have identified the side with the weaker argument and they know it."

From my statement in the Senate Minority Report of 2008 on Man-Made Global Warming Claims.

Ben Franklin

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Ayn Rand on Force and Morality

"Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins." From Atlas Shrugged

The Neverending Battle for Freedom

Requires a Knowledge of Moral and Political Principles

Winston Churchill

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."

Ludwig von Mises

"A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings."

Ayn Rand on Truth Seeking

"The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it."

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D.

Charles in Laboratory

Benno Schmidt, President of Yale, March 1991

"The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses ... The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind."

Tacitus, 56 - 120 A.D.

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. "

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.

George Eliot

"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but one must take it because it's right."

Is that not all times?

Public Servant Tyrants

"The people must remain ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants." George Washington

Aristotle on Inequality

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."

Claiming unequal things equal in mathematics is obviously wrong, but so is claiming the equality of an individual with good character to an individual of bad character fraught with deleterious consequences.

Mencken on Public Education

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: It is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Thomas Edison

"From his neck down, a man is worth a couple of dollars a day; from his neck up, he is worth anything his brain can invent."

Ayn Rand on Self-Assurance

"But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself." From The Fountainhead

Frederick Douglass

“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”

William S. Knudsen

"A conference is a gathering of guys that singly can do nothing and together decide nothing can be done."

Big Bill Knudsen was the manufacturing genius from the automotive industry who decided that U.S. WWII warfare production should be performed in the private sector with as little government interference as possible. U.S. production overwhelmed that of the Axis Powers as a result and the transition back to peace-time production was vastly eased. He is a little-recognized American Hero.

Margaret Thatcher

"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."

Pajama Boy for ObamaCare

I'll be an adult when I am 26. I have no job and live with Mommy. I will get a big subsidy when I go on ObamaCare. Good thing, because medical insurance costs for young men in my state are 2 to 3 times what they used to be. If my gender studies degree ever gets me a job, medical insurance will cost me a fortune. I'd rather just sit at home drinking hot chocolate and have Mommy feed me and do my laundry.

Ayn Rand on Lack of Self-Direction

"The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap." From The Fountainhead

Bastiat on Socialism

"Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism." Frederic Bastiat, 1801-1850

James Madison

Property is "every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage."

"He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them."

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."

"That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property so called."

"If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property: which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, ... such a government is not a pattern for the United States."

[Yet such a property violating government we now have.]

Obama According to Ron Pisaturo

"My opponents don’t have a plan for the economy, for education, for training, for retirement, for health care, for energy, for jobs, for wages, for investments, for diets. What kind of dictators are they?"

Ron Pisaturo's paraphrase of Obama's State of the Union Address in January 2014.

Starve the Kleptocracy and Tyranny

and Promote the General Welfare by Protecting Individual Rights

John Galt on the Battle

John Galt says in Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand:

Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

Groucho Marx

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."

Charles in Pensacola, FL

Boy with a Purpose

Andrew Jackson

"Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government .... If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, [government] would be an unqualified blessing."

Jay Leno

"The White House admitted President Obama’s chief of staff had advance warning that the IRS was targeting conservative groups. President Obama says the first time he heard about the IRS and AP scandals was from the media. See, that’s why President Obama holds press conferences. It’s not to explain what’s going on. It’s to find out what’s going on."

Government is too big to be well-managed even by a competent manager. It is now apparent what happens when the chief executive is incompetent, but is convinced he is the chief Progressive Elitist.

Thomas Jefferson

"The democracy will cease when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

James I, King of Great Britain

"The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods."

There is historical precedent for the level of hubris of the Progressive Elitist rulers of our time. Just as James I tried to rule independently of Parliament with a claim of god-like knowledge, so does Obama rule independently of our Congress, secure in the belief that he too has a god-like knowledge of what is best for the People.

2nd Amendment Right

Calvin Coolidge

Reduced top income tax rate to 25%.Reduced the national debt.Balanced and reduced the budget.Vetoed 50 bills.

"I am for economy, and after that I am for more economy.”

“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”

A Novel by Gen LaGreca

A Dream of Daring - A thickly plotted romantic novel

Jean Jacques Burlamaqui

"Natural liberty is the right, which nature gives to all mankind, of disposing of their persons and property, after the manner they judge most convenient to their happiness, on condition of their acting within the limits of the law of nature, and their not abusing it to the prejudice of their fellow men. To this right of liberty there is a reciprocal obligation corresponding, by which the law of nature binds all mankind to respect the liberty of other men, and not to disturb them in the use they make of it, so long as they do not abuse it."

Kail M. Padgitt, of the Tax Foundation produced the 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index in October. The report evaluates the effects of...

Pamela Geller

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, Defeat Jihad

Roger Scruton, 2006

The English law existed not to control the individual but to free him.

Laurence J. Peter

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

Ben Franklin - 2nd Amendment

"Democracy... Is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty... Is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

This is why every individual has the right to defend himself, as recognized in the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

John Milton

"Where there is much desire to learn, here of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."

Cato's Letters

"the power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his own Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys."

They Would Rule the People

Rather than Serve the People

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

More Important than Ever

Atlas Shrugged, Part II

The Movie, Either-Or, Now on DVD

Democracy -- The Suicide

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soonwastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Praise the Constitution

and Pass the Intellectual Ammunition

Ayn Rand: Philosophical Detection

What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an "open mind", but an active mind -- a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically. An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgment, it reaches firm convictions and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with assailants -- a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith, approximation, evasion and fear.

If you keep an active mind, you will discover (assuming that you started with common-sense rationality) that every challenge you examine will strengthen your convictions, that the conscious, reasoned rejection of false theories will help you to clarify and amplify the true ones, that your ideological enemies will make you invulnerable by providing countless demonstrations of their own impotence.

Alan MacFarlane, 1978

The majority of ordinary people in England from at least the thirteenth century were rampant individualists, highly mobile both geographically and socially, economically rational, market-oriented and acquisitive, ego-centered in kinship and social life. Perhaps this is no surprise, for it makes them very like their descendants.

On Error and Judgment by Ayn Rand

An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.

Howard Roark at his trial:

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need." .....

"I wished to come and say that the integrity of a man's creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who're destroying the world." ...

"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society."

Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

Despite the fact that NASA scientists are among the foremost promoters of catastrophic global warming due to man's use of fossil fuels a...

California Venus

Rupert Schmid, 1864-1932

George Bernard Shaw

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

Paul's immorality is soon characteristic of the entire society, contributing evermore to strife and conflict and the discouragement of productive labor.

Fight Big Government

Reduce Spending

Thomas Paine on Principle

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."

Limited Government Capitalism

is the only system that allows Individuals to make their own moral choices and to act upon them. Without individual moral choice, there is no morality and society is mean, brutal, envious, and depressing.

The Homage of Reason

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

Tocqueville

“a man’s admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him”.

First ObamaCare Stole Your Body

Minimum Family Plan = $20,000

In the name of the best within you,

do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.

But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, and grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

Immoral Government Health Care

Barack Hussein Obama

Consensus

Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually"- Abba Eban

Obama's Socialism

Absolutely Childish, Banal Thinking

Rose Robbins - Singer/Songwriter

A Goddess would envy her voice.

Who is John Galt?

From John Galt's Speech to Americans in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand:

"I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values."

"Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act, he must know the nature and purpose of his action."

"But to think is an act of choice." ..... "In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival -- so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be" is the question 'to think or not to think.'

"A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. 'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it. 'Value' presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value' presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible."

"There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence -- and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms."

"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice -- and the alternative his nature offers is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man -- by choice; he has to hold his life as a value -- by choice; he has to learn to sustain it -- by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues -- by choice."

"A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."

"Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man -- for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life."

"Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness -- to value the failure of your values -- is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altar of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man -- every man -- is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose."

Thus said John Galt, or shall we say Ayn Rand, the great novelist, philosopher, moralist, and Capitalism's greatest moral defender. The quoted sections above are an abridgment of John Galt's speech in the novel Atlas Shrugged. Between the quotes, no changes were made.

A Call to the Sons of Liberty

This is not the time for summer soldiers. This is a time of American crisis calling for winter soldiers.

John Paul Jones

I have not yet begun to fight! The image is from the Navy Memorial.

Thomas Jefferson:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Charles R. Anderson, Ph. D.

The First Known Use of the Concept Freedom

Amagi, or Freedom, in the cuneiform shown above, is first known to have appeared in a clay document in 2300 BC in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

The Rational Mind Seeks Truth

in the critical observation and understanding of reality. Reality is primary, not man's wishes and whims.